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Export Controls

Export Controls

Economic and trade sanctions enacted by one government against another often have detrimental effects on the free flow of digital communications and communications technologies that activists, innovators and ordinary users of technologies desperately need. EFF has a long history of fighting against those effects, especially by the US government.

Since the beginning, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has worked to ensure that individuals everywhere have access to important technologies that they need to communicate, enjoy privacy, and organize. As part of the “crypto wars,” we handled the seminal case, Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, that, along with a sister case Junger v. Daley, resulted in rulings that written software code is speech protected by the First Amendment. In Bernstein, the court held that export control laws on encryption programs violated Bernstein’s First Amendment rights by prohibiting his constitutionally protected right to publish his software. This ruling helped spur the government to change its licensing practices so that everyone now has the right to publish, and thereby “export” most encryption software without prior permission from the government.

Today, we continue our work to ensure that U.S. takes steps necessary to free up vital communications technologies from export controls, so that companies have the information they need to apply for export licenses to controlled countries or to understand that no license is needed, while simultaneously fighting for overall clarity and reform of the labyrinthine export regulations.

Instead of coming up with a new draft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Nate Cardozo says he wants the US to reopen the initial discussions that led to the software restrictions with the Wassenaar negotiators. That way, says the EFF staff attorney, the agreement could focus on actual spyware and surveillance...

Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Register that the storm over the proposed changes highlighted the need for a full rethink when the member states who sign up to Wassenaar meet to discuss the changes in December.
"I don’t think anyone thinks this was a...

EFF has long advocated for greater vigilance over the potential sale of specially-developed surveillance tools to oppressive regimes that use technology to commit human rights abuses. We want those countries to be held legally accountable for such conduct, and have rallied tech companies to...

Email. Online banking. Facebook. Your doctor’s office. These are all places where we rely on encryption to keep the private details of our lives safe. Without encryption, none of these services would be remotely safe to use, and even with encryption breaches are too common. We all want the digital...

One of EFF's first major legal victories was Bernstein v. Department of Justice, a landmark case that resulted in establishing code as speech and changed United States export regulations on encryption software, paving the way for international e-commerce. We represented Daniel J. Bernstein, a Berkeley mathematics Ph.D. student, who wished...